


Bennu Kenobi Meta

by OwlFlight



Series: Bennu Kenobi [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Female Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gen, Meta, Metafiction, Misogyny, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Pregnancy, Other, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violation of Medical Ethics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:30:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5742106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwlFlight/pseuds/OwlFlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meta-fic for Bennu Kenobi, Daughter of the Desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bennu Kenobi Meta

**Author's Note:**

> Bennu Kenobi is an original character in a ‘verse that I have no intention of writing. That said, I enjoy worldbuilding about her (then again, I enjoy worldbuilding in general); if you care to read further, please continue below.
> 
> The story borrows fairly heavily from lectorel’s Daughter of the Desert cultural Tatooine headcanon and is further inspired by fialleril’s immense background on Tatooine culture. These two have given me permission for this, and I have included some of lectorel's comments on the original worldbuilding.
> 
> **WARNING: Potential triggers for rape, non-con, dub-con, misogyny, involuntary body modification, and questionable medical ethics.**

After delivering Luke Skywalker to Tatooine, a female Obi-Wan Kenobi spent a significant amount of time off-world, helping the fledgling Rebel Alliance grow. All events that took place in the prequels proceeded according to canon, with the single exception that Obi-Wan was born and had always been female. 

It was on one of her errands for the Alliance that Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the few Jedi Masters left in existence, was captured by the Empire. Not just the Empire; by the Emperor himself. Vader - fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective - was absent at the time, doing his Master’s will on the other side of the Galaxy.

‘Unfortunately’, because all he would have done is kill Kenobi - and he might have been able to successfully object to his Master’s plans.

Emperor Palpatine - Darth Sidious - had always had an eye for the future. He had the medical results - and biological samples - from Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker’s last set of medical tests, both pre- and post-Mustafar. And he now had a Jedi Master.

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Both perhaps the strongest, most skilled Jedi of their generation. Male and Female. Their offspring, if the Force breed true, would have made *perfect* potential Apprentices.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, very quickly, found herself the involuntary subject of an in vitro fertilization procedures. It was all the more horrible for the clinical, impersonal nature of what was done to her. She managed to escape from her captors, from the _Emperor_ , by a miracle - after the pregnancy was confirmed.

Lectorel: _The only way I could think to make it work is to really /own/ the misogyny. Have the emperor be the sort of person who thinks nothing of a woman’s autonomy. Parallel it with Padme’s death (and the theory Sidious killed her remotely to keep Vader alive during the end of ROTS.) Have Obi-Wan parallel it with Padme’s death. Make her contemplate inducing a miscarriage, getting an abortion, really think about her options, and (if she decides to keep the baby) decide she’s doing it because she wants to - because she wants to piss off Sidious by stealing the child away, because she wants something of Anakin to keep for herself, even the very cold reasoning of providing another back-up to take Vader out in the future._

That is the background for Bennu Kenobi, daughter of a female Obi-Wan Kenobi, daughter of the desert.

Bennu, who was conceived in a laboratory and who was born free only by the luckiest of coincidences. Bennu, who Obi-Wan gave serious thought to aborting before cold-blooded calculation, weariness, and the selfish urge to have _something_ of her own stayed her hands.

Bennu, who _radically_ changed the life of Obi-Wan Kenobi, known as Ben Kenobi to the people of Tatooine.

In one life, ‘Mad Ben’ Kenobi would have become known as the hermit of the Judland Waste. In this life, things went differently.

‘Ben’ Kenobi would have stumbled into Anchorhead, tired, weary, noticeably pregnant, and with a faint, pervasive terror flickering behind her eyes as she stared at the run-down med center before turning and staggering away. The clinic was a government facility – meaning the Empire, and the former Jedi could not risk her name or genetic information – or worse, that of her child – ending up in an Imperial database. For all she knew, it was flagged to respond to exactly those cues. (And perhaps it was. Far away, a man in a black suit and a dark mask had felt something stir in his chest when he was informed that he was once more to be a father).

Lectorel: _[Vader’s] a child of slavery and a single mother - he probably has experience with sexual assault and threats of it. How /dare/ Sidious use him in such a manner? (Privately he is sick inside, because that is a line he would never cross.)_

The woman who was once a Jedi would have turned instead to the (fairly large) poverty-stricken population of former slaves and those who could not afford a state-run service, quietly asking for the location of the local midwife.

A midwife who would have run her hands down the hermit’s swollen stomach and asked all the usual questions – _how long, what have you been eating, have you been getting enough water?_ – before asking of the father.

A midwife who would have instantly recognized the expression crossing ‘Ben’s’ face, the iron in her voice as she quietly told the other woman that the child was _hers_ and there wasn’t a father.

‘Unfathered’, the midwife would have declared then, settling back on her heels.

Obi-Wan’s child, hers alone, freeborn for all that she was delivered in the slave quarters on Tatooine. Daughter to a woman who would have been regarded as a foreigner to the desert planet – but she was mother to an Unfathered, and the desert claimed its own. It started with the women – strangers to the one-time Jedi – who held her hands as she struggled through a birth she had never thought to experience, who settled her child against her sweat-streaked chest and told her that she had a daughter. Who asked her what the child’s name would be –

(Not Skywalker. That was too risky; there was already a toddler with that name on the Lars farm, and people would have asked questions. _Bennu_ , croaked Obi-Wan Kenobi – she had never been terribly imaginative when it came to names. _Bennu Kenobi, daughter of Ben Kenobi_ the midwife said, face harsh - but there was a welcome there for both. _Unfathered of Tatooine.)_

Secretly, Obi-Wan was grateful for a daughter, instead of a son. It would have been – perhaps too much to have a living copy of the boy she’d all but raised to manhood – and failed so terribly. It was almost too much as it was.

_My daughter._ Obi-Wan would have thought, watching Bennu sleep in a makeshift cradle that a nameless woman had silently presented her with. Bennu Kenobi. (There would have been another name, one she never spoke, but a constant in her thoughts when she looked at her daughter’s stubborn chin and blue, blue eyes.)

Life would have been different for an Unfathered child and her mother. Very different then it would have been otherwise. If Ben Kenobi wished to take her daughter and raise her in near-isolation on the edge of the Judland Wastes – _she is mother to an Unfathered,_ the whisper would have gone as the woman trudged into town for supplies, her daughter strapped to her chest. There was a quiet understanding that such a woman might have a very good reason to wish to avoid – well, everyone.

Bennu grew with the desert as her playground, the Living and Unifying Force flowing strongly within and around her as she played with shadows and the curl of wind-blown sand. Her mother would have been a constant presence on the edge of her awareness – sometimes quiet, sometimes more then slightly awkward when it came to her daughter, but Bennu would never have doubted that her mother loved her.

When it came time for Bennu’s education, Ben would have sent her to the local school, and been quietly, desperately grateful that Luke Skywalker was several years ahead of his unknown sister – and too preoccupied with ‘cooties’ to pay much mind to girls. The former Jedi would have been surprised but more then a little thankful at her daughter’s proclivity to making friends - and at how much her child drew her into the local community.

There might have been a few playdates, and Obi-Wan would have been taken aback when she found herself more and more involved with the other women of the community. The mothers, aunts, and sisters, daughters, who did not judge, but understood why a woman might have wished to run, to hide, why she might have sought to lose herself in the desert. There might even have been the faintest hint of admiration for her choices and capability – _The desert knows it own,_ she was told by a woman inked with tattoos and the scar-mark of a forcibly removed slave-chip.

(And one day, ‘Ben’ Kenobi looked at herself and nearly laughed until she wept at the irony that after so long trying to understand her one-time student she had all but _become_ him – she was a woman of Tatooine now, mother to an Unfathered, accepted as one of their own by the woman who made their living on the harsh sands of the endless desert).

And Bennu grew up listening to the stories that she and her mother learned together, growing to understand what was meant when she was called ‘Unfathered’. She would have dressed herself in the colors proclaiming her status – she was not afraid of what she was, facing it with the brutal honesty she had learned from her mother - because it did not _matter_. Really, it didn’t matter where she had come from – all that mattered was who she _was._ Bennu had few friends, but those that she had were very close indeed – but not close enough to learn the secrets that her mother passed down to her.

_This is for us._ Obi-Wan would tell her daughter as they sat on the sand together, beneath an endless, echoing night sky. _Don’t tell anyone. Not ever. Not anyone. They will kill you if they know –_ but Bennu wouldn’t have needed to promise, this was something between her and her mother, this was family, and she learned with frightening ability as her mother taught her levitation, taught her the steps of the ‘saber-dance, taught her her ‘saber construction and empathy and everything that she felt she could teach a child.

(Obi-Wan made a special emphasis on teaching her daughter ethics. When it was appropriate to use her power. The Code, even – but only as a guideline. _Love is never wrong._ She told her daughter quietly. _But it can lead you to terrible things – and when that happens, it isn’t love anymore.)_

Obi-Wan spent her entire life preparing Bennu for the possibility of her mother’s death. Bennu would have been taught to memorize at least two different comlink codes – one to Alderaan and one to Dagobah. There were account numbers and access codes she learned by heart – and gentle instructions on how to run, how to hide. There was a bag packed with false identification and enough resources to start somewhere new – Obi-Wan took no chances with her daughter’s safety.

Bennu was doing her homework the day her mother dragged home an unconscious teenage boy and two droids. She was fifteen, and fetched the water without asking, recognizing the Skywalker kid from three grades ahead of her – he’d graduated last year, but she still had a ways to go. She knew his aunt better – Beru had always been kind to her, a strange guilt flaring in her emotions when she looked at the straggly strawberry blonde.

She was full of questions when her mother told her to grab the omnipresent packs set carefully to one side of the door – but the pale, pinched expression on ‘Ben’s’ face silenced her even as she raced to pack, mind swimming with strange thoughts. Her mother had been a Jedi? ‘Jedi’ was the name for what they were, what they could do?

_The Empire has come to the planet, and it’s no longer safe for any of us._ Obi-Wan told her privately, in the special way they talked some times, between their minds – silently, so no one else could hear. _We’re going to Alderaan. All of us._

Bennu loved the Falcon, even though she did her best to avoid Captain Solo – he was nice enough, she could _feel_ it, but she got along with the Wookie so much better. She followed Chewbacca around, asking him questions about everything he’d seen, all the places he’d been – Han joined in in the storytelling, weaving elaborate stories about all the places he’d been and all the things they’d done, together.

_I want to see them!_ Bennu told her mother, and was startled at the strange shock of guilt that echoed back from her declaration. She didn’t know, but Obi-Wan was remembering another Skywalker child who had told her the same thing, once upon a time.

_Hide._ Obi-Wan told her daughter as they were pulled onto the Death Star. _Make yourself small in the Force. Don’t look, don’t feel – hide, Bennu._ And Bennu, mind reeling from the death-scream of a planet, would have obeyed.

And before Obi-Wan Kenobi left, to turn off the tractor beam, to free the small party, to free her daughter – knowingly facing her death, she took a moment, just a moment, to stroke Bennu’s hair. “You are my daughter.” She told her daughter, love bleeding down the link between them. “You are Bennu Kenobi. You are Unfathered of Tatooine, a daughter of the desert. You are wanted. You are loved.” She paused. “You have to be brave.” She told her daughter quietly. “A little crying is good – “ And now Bennu was looking at her, terror beginning to stir in her eyes. “ – but not forever. Trust Luke – he’ll make sure that you’re taken care of. Tell the Alliance that you are my daughter – you can trust them. Trust your instincts. Trust the Force.” She paused. “I love you.” She told her daughter earnestly, drawing her close and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

Vader asked, when he and his former Master met again for the first time in years. “Where is the child, Obi-Wan?” And Obi-Wan Kenobi smiled fiercely and told him the truth – from a certain point of view. “There is no child, Lord Vader – none of yours. I saw to that.”

Later, after Darth Vader split his one-time teacher in two, Vader’s eyes would have been drawn to the strawberry-blonde girl-child screaming in the hanger bay – a child in the colors of the Unfathered, a child who was exactly the right age, and realized how accurate – yet misleading – Obi-Wan’s comment was.

_(There are two other Skywalkers._ Yoda would tell Luke, years in the future.)

And a little before that, Bennu Kenobi faced Darth Vader in a room in Cloud City. She’d begun to suspect – at least a little, the idea growing when Vader had confronted them. Kenobi’s child, he called her, and asked her of her father. _I am Unfathered of Tatooine._ She declared, gaze clear, shoulders straight. _I have no father._


End file.
